AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Value-added taxes on rail travel
should be scrapped to encourage people to travel more by train,
a step that will help fight global warming, the head of the
Union of European Railway Industries (UNIFE) said on Monday.

"As long as rail passengers have to pay value-added tax for
tickets and rail operators have to pay value-added tax for
energy and even an eco-tax in some countries on electricity, we
will continue to have a regulatory system that aims at
encouraging passengers to avoid the train and to take the plane
instead," UNIFE chairman Andre Navarri told an industry
conference in Amsterdam.

The UNIFE represents some 60 European companies which
design and make rail-transport systems and related equipments.
Its members make up some 70 percent of the global production of
rail equipment.

Navarri urged the European Commission to abolish these
taxes from which planes are exempt.

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"If Europe really wants to meet its ambitious target to
reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020, the European Union
needs to decide on a legal framework where the train is no
longer punished with energy taxes and value-added taxes on
tickets," he said.

Environmentalists say trains emit less climate-warming
carbon dioxide and that planes are 10 times more damaging to
the climate than trains.

A U.N. report last year said increasing use of cars and
planes will push up greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades.

Navarri said the recently opened Madrid-Barcelona rail line
will save 170 million tonnes of CO2 annually compared with the
same journey by air or road.